


Everything for the Crown

by LindseyWells



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Bulimia, Control Issues, Depression, Eating Disorders, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One-Sided Attraction, Perfectionism, Pride, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Self-Induced Vomiting, Slow To Update, ambivalent feelings, compulsive exercising
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9471353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindseyWells/pseuds/LindseyWells
Summary: For years, Oikawa's eating disorder has been his secret stabilizer, feeding him the illusion of having everything under perfect control. But when his dream of winning the Spring High-Miyagi Prefecture Representative Playoffs eventually shatters, things start getting completely out of hand. And if that was not already bad enough, he also receives an anonymous email from someone knowing all about his secret suffering.





	1. Prologue: The Tale of the Imprisoned King

**Author's Note:**

> This is a translation of a fic I've recently finished. My translation skills aren't exactly the best, but I hope some of you don't mind and just enjoy the story.  
>  Also, **please note the warnings** mentioned above! This story deals with depressive feelings, eating disorders, perfectionism, ambivalent feelings, as well as common myths/misconceptions about both eating disorders and healthy eating. So please take care of yourself and don't read this story if the issues are too triggering for you.
> 
> Last but not least, I'd like to thank Archer/DrWhohouselock221b from ff.net for the great beta reader service! _*thank you very much!*_
> 
> !The artwork used to design this tiny cover doesn't belong to me!

The crown of dizzyingly high expectations had been put on his head long before anybody ever called him the Grand King.

Oikawa Tooru ~~cannot remember~~ refuses to remember whether it was somebody else or he himself who laid the burdening weight on both his head and his heart. Enveloped by a persistent aura of pathological pride, insatiable ambitions, and exorbitant demands on himself, he cannot but make every possible effort to keep his crown in place, to keep his balance on the throne. A task which is incredibly difficult to perform once you have become aware of the intimidating presence of all the geniuses threatening your reign.

' _You're not a king!_ ' They do the miracle of whispering without moving their sublime lips. ' _You don't have it in you. You're not one bit like us! You're rank and file! And we'll put you back in your place!_ '

Yes, he is going to fall, he is going to be overthrown, for the mere reason that he is simply not good enough to rule for good. The devastating realization hits Tooru quite early in life. Grudgingly putting up with the fact that he suffers the misfortune of being born inferior in comparison to all the truly brilliant volleyball players out there, he uses any means available to fight his inner terror, to at least maintain the puny remnant of security left in him. He certainly had no intention whatsoever to develop an eating disorder. It is just that by and by Tooru figures out that his diet is the one area in his 13-year-old life which is easiest to master. In no time, the control of his daily food intake feels as comforting as being wrapped in a cozy safety blanket, and Tooru quickly learns to love this kind of extraordinary protection idolatrously. After all, a healthy diet is no crime for a motivated athlete and thus it is only logical to reduce the import of sticky lollipops, dangerously sweet milk bread and the like into his bodily kingdom. Nobody has to know the real reason behind his new custom provisions. Nobody has to know that the very thought of being pushed from the throne scares him to death. And most certainly it is absolutely nobody's business that Tooru, in an attempt to suppress his anxiety and to improve his bodily condition, becomes addicted to high-protein breakfast dishes and devotional prepared lunch boxes housing a tidy arrangement of vegetable sticks, rice balls, seaweed salad, as well as lean pieces of tofu and meat.

It is a slow process, this growing obsession with sugar-free drinks, energy bars, and neurotic menu planning. A steady development never questioned at home. If anything, his mother is supportive and understanding since she used to be a passionate gymnast as a teen and, despite two pregnancies, has been managing to keep her petite figure with ease. Tooru's father, on the contrary, is not the type of man wasting a thought on his diet. Good genes bless him with the privilege to eat whatever he wants and whenever he wants it, and as long as there is some fried chicken or rice on the dinner table every now and then, he sees absolutely no necessity to complain about his wife's perfectly well-balanced meals. And then there is Tooru's elder sister who is, although only in terms of physical build, a younger version of their mother that hits the gym three times a week. The latter comes particularly handy because it regularly offers Tooru the opportunity to sneak into his sister's room and read through endless pages of workout plans, nutrition tables, and flirting tips listed in her fitness magazines.  
All in all, home is a place where Tooru's new eating habits flourish and grow unhindered.

Friends and practice are a whole different story though, for someone always catapults Tooru into a conflict of interest by conjuring up a bag of chewy sweets or chocolate bars. On the one hand, he instantly wants to reject the candy in order to prove that he does not need it. He is not an ordinary peasant. He sits high above everything and everyone.  
On the other hand, he longs to be an essential part of his team, a leader perceived as a good and trusted friend, but only birds of a feather flock together. And 13-year old boys eat chewy sweets, Smarties, and chocolate-coated birthday cake. What exacerbates the situation further is the fact that Tooru actually _loves_ candy. So his vivid brown eyes always beam thankfully in light of a friend's kind offer or whenever they go and buy popsicles after practice on hot summer days.  
It is not until Tooru is back home that his neurotic thought patterns regain the upper hand and he starts to panic. His racing heart beating reason into his greedy brain then, making absolutely clear that the worse his physical condition, the sooner he will fall. For fear of his throne, Tooru hastily works off every slice of cake and every single sticky strawberry-chocolate toffee he consumes. He cannot help it. It is like a reflex and he cannot calm down before his shirt is soaked with sweat. Afterwards, damp air kisses his luscious eyelashes and black dots dance through his vision, reassuring him that he did just the right thing. Somehow it feels like drifting through space, and as long as he plays by the safety rules, as long as he finds his way back to the right path after slipping, everything is going to be fine just a little longer.

With that in mind, it is hardly surprising that the cheat days achieve to pass Tooru's meticulous customs officer. At the age of 14, his desk drawer is stuffed with hand-made pralines and cookies, given to him by pretty girls with red faces and stammered love confessions on their lips. Tooru usually rewards the girls' courage by giving the nicely wrapped treats a try and then, with a smile to melt away, pays the skillful confectioners a compliment. After all, loyal subjects are always welcome in his kingdom. Furthermore, being seen eating sweets in public brings the advantage of appearing completely normal. Nobody thinks him a freak because of his eating habits. He just plays Mr. perfectly healthy way too convincingly, even though his compulsive control never grants him the liberty to permit himself more than one praline or one cookie at a time, since that is precisely the amount he feels confident to be able to work off during the rest of the day.

In addition to this, it cannot be healthy, either, to hear the pralines and cookies in your desk drawer sing your name like a pack of banshees while you are desperately trying to focus on your homework.  
' _We know what's good for you. We know what your insecure heart is longing for. So please, love, let's help! We'd never hurt you. We promise!_ '

Lies! Nothing but lies! Tooru knows for sure. The deceitful banshees are announcing the impending death of his self-control and after endless month of tough regulations, Tooru ~~does not want to fight the urge anymore~~ has gotten to the point where he is completely and utterly unable to resist the urge any longer. Sure, his inner balance entirely depends on being in control of his food intake, but his long suppressed discomposure is suddenly in full bloom. The totalitarian king in Tooru has awoken from his hibernation and is everything but satisfied with the limits of his empire. He wants **more**. He wants **everything** —just like Tooru wants to achieve everything in volleyball. Consequently, one cookie is not enough, because one cookie tastes like plain silver when you are starving for exquisite gold.

So in spite of being painfully aware that he will never be able to work off all the calories awaiting him, Tooru's greedy hands shovel each and every praline and cookie into his mouth. Within a few minutes, months of presents are gone, leaving Tooru still yearning for more! **More! MORE!** Before he even knows what he is doing, he dashes down into the kitchen, grabs a spoon, a tall glass, the package of cacao powder, and the milk. Back in his room, he drinks one glass full of overdosed cacao—Why doesn't anybody help him?—and then a second one—Why does he have to carry the weight of the crown all alone?—and even a third one—But sharing his throne is not an option. Period.  
God, his ambivalence is driving him _insane_ and his stomach is making him _sick_!  
His lips part in pure desperation, paving the way for retching, puking, spitting, and eventually laughing. Abusing your gag reflex in order to bring up sticky chocolate smear is definitely no walk in the park, but Tooru does not give a damn about his vomit-soiled fingers, his cramping lungs, or his burning throat. Currently, the only thing that counts for him is the invaluable feeling of total relief soothing his bad conscience.

Henceforth, self-induced vomiting gradually turns into yet another unhealthy strategy to regulate his emotions. Manically, Tooru crunches ~~his favorite breakfast cereal~~ his impregnable self-doubts and ~~his beloved neon-colored jelly babies~~ his sadness, so he can throw up ~~stinking slime and poorly chewed candy~~ all his anger and frustration. The ritual settles for Mondays, when he is all alone. His home an impenetrable fortress preventing anybody from witnessing how Tooru, the boy who was born an exceptional and aspiring learner, rapidly evolves into a professional puker.  
Under the leadership of secrecy and self-hate, he experiences not only which foods are easy to bring up again and which are not, but also that it is wiser to wear latex gloves than to expose his eager hands to corrosive stomach acid. He buys both the cheap gloves and his binge foods in supermarkets nearby, hides them in his room, and draws an awful lot of strength and self-confidence from believing that it is him and only him who is in the driver's seat.

Puking outside home is rather the exception for him. The only occasions being family trips to restaurants which offer too large buffets and no wafer-thin bathroom walls. And even then it only happens on particularly bad days, when neither hard practice nor his safety rules are device enough to subjugate the envy and fear boiling up in his chest. Why do born volleyball geniuses like Kageyama and Ushijima even exist? It is so fucking unfair! Tooru just cannot accept it. Not even after being headbutted by Iwaizumi for acting like a self-centered “moron” pointlessly overworking himself. It is not that Tooru does not appreciate his best friend's concern–he really does–but unfortunately, none of Iwaizumi's words or actions are strong enough to break Tooru's deadlocked thinking patterns and exorcise his deeply rooted perfectionism once and for all. So after a few relatively peaceful days, the fatal combination of pride and self-doubts nesting in his mind once again fuel his eating disorder until it is ablaze. By then, it has become so normal for Tooru that he does not even realize that he is at war with himself. All he does is tell himself over and over again that his way of handling food is no big deal and that he can change it any time he pleases, even though the hard truth is that he has long turned into his eating disorder's obedient servant and, as such, is thoroughly addicted to his very personal illusion of safety, to the soothing effect of accurately packed bentos and secret binges that can be undone without a hitch.

Therefore, he stays the energetic guy smiling from one ear to the other when shoved a bag of marshmallows under his nose after practice. The habit to entertain tempts him, then, into fishing two of the white candies out off the bag, plugging them into his nostrils, and producing an animalistic sound while pulling a face. His teammates' flashing up laughter the applause Tooru's narcissistic personality desperately starving for.  
“Oi! Don't you play with food, Assikawa! You're not a toddler anymore!”  
Neither minding the grumpy admonition nor the rebuking hit against his occiput, Tooru simply giggles in return, picks the marshmallows out off his nostrils, and lets them melt on his tongue. A reaction which earns him a disgusted shake of the head by Iwaizumi. But frankly, Tooru does not care anymore when people think him childish. His life is a game he can only lose in the long term. Cursed by his inner demons to play along, Tooru leastwise tries to have as much fun and gain as much approval as possible for as long as the game is still on.

Later, he walks home instead of taking the bus. After all, marshmallows are pure sugar, yet there is nothing sweet about Tooru's ceaseless efforts to win, to rule. Year after year, Ushijima is the one wearing the gold medal around his neck; and all the recent signs indicate that Kageyama is the one setter who will eventually outshine Tooru.  
Yes, the reign of Oikawa the Great is irrevocably coming to an end.  
The prospective tastes as bitter as the bile dripping from Tooru's bottom lip when he is kneeling in front of the toilet, looking everything but majestic.


	2. From Polished Denial and Blooming Guilt

The smell and the sight of the extensive Italian buffet hit Kageyama Tobio like an icy flood of sharp slaps. Everything but enthusiastic, the 16-year-old entered the spacious restaurant right behind his cheerfully chatting parents, who had been looking forward to tonight's dinner for weeks. Yet, neither their merriment, nor the restaurant's inviting atmosphere and the waiter's polite greeting could prevent the hard frown from entrenching into Tobio's face. This was probably the only place on earth that could kill his appetite in an instant. Much to his chagrin, his mother was quite fond of this exquisite restaurant and hence insisted on celebrating her birthday here annually. Only a few years ago, Tobio too had been able to enjoy the wide selection of freshly prepared Italian dishes making every guest perfectly happy. Since then, however, things had irrevocably changed, resulting in a now ill-humored Tobio quietly following his parents and the waiter to the reserved table.

Once there, the Kageyama family took its seat and made its drink order. Plagued by Eros Ramazzotti's distinctive voice and the fine fragrance of oregano and basil, Tobio pretended to flick sincerely interested through the thick menu card while in fact scanning the other guests from head to toe. It was approximately 7 pm and about 2/3 of the tables were occupied. His alert blue eyes did not find what they had been looking for, though.  
Thanks to the negative search result, Tobio's strained muscles relaxed a little, just in time to focus on the waiter returning, placing the drinks on the tabletop, and taking the food order. As usual, Tobio's father chose the buffet and, also as usual, his mother picked her favorite veal meal from the menu card. For knowing pretty well that saying “I'm not hungry” would only sour the mood of the entire evening, the raven-haired teenager simply joined his father in his choice and hoped time would pass quickly. As much as Tobio loved his parents, he just hated this restaurant abysmally. There was nothing he could do about it. To him, the place had become a synonym of two extremely unpleasant things, namely the harsh stench of vomit and his very own inadequacy. Suppressing the latter was usually not a problem for him anymore—at least on 364 days of the year. On the remaining day, and against Tobio's explicit permission, the visit to the restaurant exhumed the memory of an accidental observation he once had made here. Down to the present day, he had not been able to make sense of the “incident” laying in his stomach like an indigestible chunk of tar. If only he had- No!  
But maybe it would have been better if he- No!  
**NO! NO! NO!**  
Shoving the pestering doubts as far aside as possible, Tobio blocked out the intense guilt threatening to overflow his brain. After all, he had long come to the conclusion that none of these thoughts and feelings were legit. Consequently, there was absolutely no reason to endure this useless debate with himself all over again.

Nonetheless, the memory cast a long shadow on his mind, inevitably thwarting his hand and thus resulting in him rather combing through the delicious antipasti on his plate than actually eating it. Wrapped up in a conversation about their plans for the upcoming weekend, his parents did not even notice his lack of appetite. And once the attention shifted to Karasuno's recent victory in the Playoffs, Tobio's mood improved dramatically. Despite all the rigorous and sudorific practice in advance, he had never allowed himself to get completely lost in the chance of winning the Playoffs and advancing to nationals. It was only yesterday, a whole week after defeating Shiratorizawa, that Tobio had truly understood that it was no longer a dream but reality. It was the reward he had not dared hope for. Yet, here he was, a winner whose cheeks filled with tingling excitement as he explained his parents once again how things would progress from now on, though they had heard it all on the day he had come home with an uncharacteristic, moronic smile on his lips and the satisfying weight of a shiny medal around his neck.

Tobio's remarkably higher spirits granted him the hunger to get himself a second and even a third helping from the buffet. Not only was the antipasti extraordinary, but also the minestrone, the polpette, the gorgonzola-filled chicken breast, and the risotto milanese with crevettes. While taking a sip from his drink, Tobio deliberated whether to try the tiramisu or the panna cotta with caramel sauce next. Surely both were amazing and he still had to finish three-quarters of his third helping before he could move on to having dessert, but-  
His chain of thoughts abruptly stopped at the sight of some newly arrived guests just getting comfortable at a table positioned at the other end of the restaurant. Tobio did not need to get any closer to recognize the far too familiar person over there, laughing along with his parents, a small boy and a young couple, presumably the boy's parents. The idea of eating dessert dismissed all at once, Karasuno's number 9 swallowed hard against the sudden dryness conquering his throat, while his gaze burned adamantly into Oikawa's back. The older student, just like the rest of his family, placed his order before bogging back down into a lively conversation that beguiled him into wild gesticulating.

It was not until Tobio had finally managed to swallow the massive lump clogging his throat that he was able to break loose from the seamless scene deeply disturbing him. Eyes now fixed on his fork, he did his best to listen to his parents exchanging ideas about a possible restructuring of the garden. Yet, his gaze soon trailed off again, instinctively searching for the one person Tobio's younger self used to watch endlessly in order to be able to copy the fine moves later on. There was no doubt that he had indeed learned a good deal just by watching Oikawa play volleyball. But then again, Tobio had not really had another choice than watching because Oikawa had vehemently refused to teach him anything.  
Tobio's fingers coiled themselves round his fork, as his memory infused him a bitter cocktail of indigestible emotions draining his oral cavity and accelerating his heartbeat. It only got worse when the other setter, accompanied by his nephew—What was his name again? Takeru? Takumi? Tobio could not quite remember—made his way to the buffet and loaded his plate.

_Slow down!_ was the only thought rattling through Tobio's head when he witnessed Aoba Johsai's captain bolting down an incredibly huge amount of penne and polpette in a flash; all the while never forgetting to joke around with his nephew or some other family member.  
By the time Oikawa got up to pay the buffet another visit, Tobio automatically leaned back in his chair, quietly thanking the large, ugly plant standing next to the table for offering a decent hideaway. Oikawa's second and third helping were just as big as his first one, and Tobio counted him reordering another glass of natural mineral water twice.

This was definitely not the way Tobio remembered Oikawa eating when they had attended middle school together. At that time, Oikawa's skillful fingers had always chosen wisely before taking a super healthy item from his painstakingly composed lunch that never contained any sweets. Although it was relatively common for bentos to include at least a small treat for dessert, Oikawa had obviously never seen a reason to bring one along. Considering the fact that he had usually gotten some kind of candy from one of the girls who had a crush on him, this had not surprised Tobio. He had also been far too preoccupied with volleyball to note other people's eating habits; and, to be honest, Tobio would still not waste a single thought on Oikawa's eating behavior if it had not been for the “incident” roughly four years ago:  
Same restaurant, similar situation, except that at that juncture Tobio had not yet scraped the courage together to go and ask Oikawa if he could teach him how to serve. In view of Oikawa's skills, which had been pretty advanced for a guy his age, Tobio had felt both intimidated and inspired. Just the mere act of watching the older boy play with all his devotion and diligence had felt amazing. His graceful and determined movements the results of an enviable body control, which he had never been too tired to perfect, regardless of how much time and energy school demanded from him.  
Tobio, who back then had not had the slightest clue that he himself would eventually settle for the position as a setter as well, had all too often felt his heart drumming an extremely disturbing, albeit thrilling rhythm of motivation and admiration just because he had stood and stared at Oikawa. The inner spectacle in his chest had not solely been caused by Oikawa's remarkable volleyball skills, though. Something about his ambitious, affable, and at times downright ridiculous persona had been so captivating that Tobio, a rather reserved boy with an admittedly poor knowledge of human nature, had felt almost magnetically attracted to the elder student.  
So on this particular evening four years ago, Tobio had practically sensed Oikawa's inimitable presence at the restaurant. Just like tonight, the other student had not taken notice of him since they had been sitting on quite distant tables. Tobio had spent about twenty minutes sliding nervously back and forth on his chair because a part of him had come up with the plan of “accidentally” bumping into Oikawa at the buffet and then asking him politely about practicing together, whereas another part of him had been eagerly arguing against it. What if Oikawa would think him rude for disturbing his privacy? Not that Oikawa himself was a textbook example of proper public behavior with all the cheesy lines he constantly flipped at his fangirls and his pronounced habit of addressing other people with the diminutive suffix “chan” far too quickly. It had only been after Oikawa's graduation from middle school that Tobio had identified the latter, at least in some situations, as completely insincere. As a freshman, however, he had not minded being called Tobio-chan the rare times Oikawa had spoken to him. If anything, Tobio had been startled and excited, his heart clumsily stumbling over its own beat and his mind sharpening with obedient concentration.

He had felt a very similar mixture of emotions, supplemented by an irrefutable tension, when he had seen Oikawa standing up from his seat once again on said evening. In order to put his plan into practice, Tobio had also risen from his chair, but against his expectations, the other volleyball player had not targeted the buffet. Instead, he had passed the elegant arrangement of food and, hands nonchalantly buried in his pockets, had sauntered downstairs. Without further thinking, Tobio had followed, arriving about a minute later at the men's restroom door. Subduing his acute nervousness with a deep breath, he had prepared himself to open the door and mimic a surprised face. Notwithstanding that he was not the type for feigning, he had hoped that it would work as he had stepped into what prima facie appeared to be a completely empty restroom. It had taken him about five seconds to comprehend that his senpai had not vanished into thin air, but that one of the stalls had been occupied. Tobio had scarcely come to that conclusion before the characteristic smell of vomit had smote him into the stomach with such an intensity that he had hardly been able to keep his own dinner down.

Frozen in revulsion, he had stood idly by the door, overhearing a shuffled breathing from the locked stall, followed by an intended silence. The only thing crossing his mind the fact that his senpai had not looked sick. The exact opposite had been the case. He had been as frivolous and vital as usual.

Flustered, Tobio had bridged the short distance between the door and the sinks in order to turn on one of the taps. His hands had met the coolness of the hard water stream before he had dried them with some paper tissues. After he had thrown the tissues in the trash bin, he had made his way back to the door. All along, there had not been a single sound or movement from the locked stall, which was odd given the fact that Oikawa had indubitably been sick in there. The smell so rank that it had made Tobio breath exclusively through the mouth. Still confused and admittedly also somewhat worried and suspicious, the raven-haired student had thought about saying something, but had not come up with the right words. Struck by a sudden impulse, he had then pretended to leave the restroom. Right after the door had been fallen back in the lock, Oikawa had carried on puking. Just like that. As if he had never been interrupted in the first place.

Tobio, for his part, had been deeply shocked by the harsh noises produced by a body forced to eject what it had just consumed. It had sounded so incredibly brutal, the shuffling of knees on the cold tiles, the sharp air induction, the gagging, the flash flood of brought up food splashing into the toilet water. . . then the gasping and spitting, before the whole procedure had started from scratch.

With only twelve years of age, Tobio had no idea what exactly he had become witness of on this evening. All he had known was that there must have been a good explanation for this, though he had not found it but had fled head over heels the moment Oikawa had flushed the toilet.  
Back at his table, Tobio had bewilderedly finished his soda while eagerly crossing out the possibility that his senpai had actually thrown up on purpose, because _who would ever do that?_ Tobio, who had not had much knowledge of eating disorders in those days and merely knew that an illness called anorexia existed, had simply not been able to draw any parallels between his fellow student and what he thought an eating disordered person to be like. His only source of information an article in one of his mother's magazines, which he had languidly cross-read some time ago while sitting in the car with her. The article had not mentioned self-induced vomiting, only restrictive eating, calorie counting, and a pathological obsession with weight loss. Since Oikawa had not been underweight, Tobio had been sure he was fine. Oh how stupid and uninformed he had been. . . !  
And for the last four years, he had been doing a lot to keep it exactly that way, the lack of knowledge allowing him to rationalize Oikawa's behavior again and again and again. For all the events that ignorance had threatened to turn its back on him, Tobio had even compiled a mental list stating why it was utterly impossible for his senpai to have any kind of eating issues. Yes, if it had not been for the list, Tobio would have not known what to do, what to think, how to perceive Oikawa, and, above all, how to live with the nagging guilt that he had deliberately ignored a serious problem. Till today, he could remember the precise wording of the list:

**Oikawa:**  
\- isn't underweight  
\- doesn't need to lose weight  
\- isn't overly concerned with food  
\- loves volleyball more than anything in the world and would therefore never harm his body  
\- is way too smart to ever throw up or starve himself on purpose

Apart from all that, the article had exclusively focused on females and hence had led Tobio to believe that it must be extremely unlikely for males to suffer from eating disorders. Yet, every reasonable person knew that it was anything but normal to jovially stroll back to the buffet and stack your plate with dessert right after puking up dinner. Tobio had just preferred to ignore this detail because... because... **damn!** He had always had too great respect for Oikawa-san to query his actions.

Half furious, half desperate, Tobio stabbed his fork into the last piece of chicken breast lying on his plate. Caught in the acoustic backdrop of his parents' ongoing discussion about the garden, he felt worse than ever. To his misfortune, Oikawa had just left his family's table, heading for the stairs.

_Stop driving yourself crazy! He's not doing it anymore!_ Tobio immediately tried to calm himself down but failed miserably. The few times he had briefly managed to somewhat admit to himself that Oikawa might have an eating disorder, he had dispelled the thought with the lamest of excuses, namely that it had probably just been a phase. Taking Oikawa's current fitness, appearance, and performance on the volleyball court into account, he seemed to be indeed perfectly healthy. Only by hair's breadth he and his team had lost the semi final against Karasuno. And Oikawa was, despite Aoba Johsai's loss, still one of the most gifted and intelligent players Tobio had ever met. Plus, he was the only player causing him trouble beyond belief. Not only was he responsible for the rawness in Tobio's chest—his heart's surrounding fretted by the excessive rhythm Oikawa's presence put it through—but also for years of puzzlement, grudge, and silent accusations.

So when Tobio now got up from his chair and mumbled a quick excuse, he only did it to check on Aoba Johsai's setter, see that he was doing fine, and thereby get rid of the ailing guilt once and for all. Taking the same route as Oikawa, Tobio passed the buffet before quietly disappearing down the stairs. With the music almost inaudible in the basement, the overzealous thumping in his chest appeared even louder. Straightening his shoulders, the 16-year old lay a hand on the door handle and pressed it down millimeter by millimeter. Greeted by an unspectacular emptiness, Tobio slipped into the men's restroom like a ghost, just to clash into a solid wall of a horrible smell constructed by laboring upchucking.

Like the 12-year old he had once been, Tobio stood helplessly by the silently closed door for an indefinite period of time, heart in ache and mind in denial. Yet, there was absolutely no doubt about what was going on here. Oikawa, who occupied the same stall as four years ago, barfed as if his life was depending on it.

Pressed against the wall by the aggressive noise of outright self-destruction, Tobio covered his nose in disgust. His anger, hitherto a relatively smooth sea, was suddenly lit by the match of truth and went up in flames as speedy as gasoline. Hell, how he hated his naivety and every lame excuse he had ever cobbled together to muzzle his sprouting doubts! And how he hated all the rivalry and stubbornness Oikawa had planted in him the moment he had rejected Tobio's request. Even more so, he hated how Oikawa had dug a deep pit between the two of them by declaring Tobio a “threat,” which, strictly speaking, had been nothing but an unilateral role that had deprived the black-haired teen of most of his personality. Hurt and insecure, he had—first unconsciously and later deliberately—taken on the assigned role and had eventually carried it too far. Yes, being rejected and ridiculed by the one person Tobio had adored, had still some diffuse feelings for, had had a radical and devastating impact on him. There had been good reasons for other people spitefully calling Tobio the “King of the Court”—and he was no longer proud of the unappealing character traits that had earned him the nickname. Yet, living the life of a dictator had blessed him with the ability to bury his suspicions and pay his full attention to the sport.

Besides all this, there was yet another thing Tobio currently hated wholeheartedly, and said thing was Oikawa's cunningness. Because if he was not such a clever and sometimes even manipulative bastard by nature, then surely some of his friends or relatives had long discovered his secret. In light of the harmony at the Oikawa family's table, nobody had even the vaguest notion of what was going on with him! God, this guy was so fucking stupid! To say Tobio was disappointed would be a massive understatement. And he was not only disappointed by Oikawa for recklessly putting his health at risk. No, he was just as disappointed by himself for clinging to a perfectly staged illusion.

Grinding his teeth, Tobio wished he had not been so intrigued and absorbed by Oikawa the brilliant setter, who, for the longest time, had managed to cement himself as an invincible enemy in Tobio’s head. Only of late, Tobio had dared to question Oikawa's divinity, finding that he was, just like everybody else, only flesh and blood and as such not safe from suffering severe problems. And this here, this was definitely severe. As a middle school student, Tobio might have been too young and emotionally too beleaguered to grasp the seriousness of the situation. The recent win, however, had partly broken the blinding spell Oikawa had once cast upon his kouhai. Up to a certain degree, Karasuno's setter still wished fate had never enjoyed stirring him and Oikawa up on the chessboard of life. For what was Tobio supposed to do now? Waiting for Oikawa to leave the stall and then bluntly confronting him would definitely not end well. Experience had taught Tobio the hard way how much time and effort it costed to make the older boy listen to him off the court. Thus, believing that Oikawa would patiently wait while Tobio was lecturing him was absurd! Also, the fact that Tobio himself was badly educated with respect to eating disorders would only aggravate the whole situation. Oikawa would make him look like a fool, laughing and lying his way out of the restroom and back upstairs, straightaway into his flawless performance of normality.

Tobio's frustrated gaze crashed on the dull white ground, the fingernails of his left hand, which was clenched into a trembling fist, sinking painfully into his palm. Harassed by self-reproaches, he wished he had never ignored that Oikawa's fingers could not only handle a volleyball magnificently, but were also shoved periodically down his throat. At least, this was what Tobio imagined this whole puking-thing to be like. But frankly, he did not want to engage with the image longer than necessary. Just standing here and listening evoked in him the cringing feeling of ruthlessly lacerating Oikawa's privacy.

It was therefore a blessing in disguise for Tobio that Oikawa seemed to be coming to an end. Between chopped breaths, he spat repeatedly and tore off some toilet paper. Judging by the following sounds, he wiped his face and his hands, before tossing the paper in the toilet bowl and flushing twice. Tobio exploited the noise by sneaking out off the restroom and running up the stairs, nearly colliding with a mother holding her pig-tailed daughter by the hand. After a short-spoken apology, he made his way back to his parents, whose plates had been cleared up by a waiter. To Tobio's relief, his own plate with the last piece of chicken breast was gone as well.

“Didn't you want to get some dessert?” His mother looked up from her espresso in surprise, just to be answered with a negative shake of the head and a plain “No.” Tobio already felt sick and eating even one more bite would doom him to take Oikawa's place in front of the toilet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you** to everyone who left kudos and reviews after reading the first chapter! I hope you enjoyed the second chapter as well?  (And I also hope I didn't miscalculate the age of the boys. . .)


	3. #nohate

There was a virtual shrine, a password-protected kingdom, dedicated to him and only him. The girls running the forum had not the faintest idea that their God kept a very close eye on them, in fact even intermingled with them. Registered under a sparkling sensation of a nickname that wore a meaningless necklace of _xoxo_ , Tooru enjoyed both full access to the forum and the unbounded confidence of its members. His profile told the heartbreaking story of a distressed 16-year old girl cursing every single day of her deadly boring existence because she did not attend the same school as her one true love. Though only occasionally dropping ~~a rather unremarkable comment~~ a laudation for himself, every trip to the forum felt like entering a holiday paradise, granting Tooru the luxury to bath in sunbeams of admiration while reading through various threads rotating around his person. Among the most hotly discussed topics were not only the popular questions "Girlfriend???" and "briefs or boxers? :D,” but also the photo thread, where members frequently posted their own snapshots of Tooru as well as reposted the photos he uploaded on his facebook and instagram.

Since all of Aoba Johsai's volleyball matches were debated in this corner of the internet as well—or to be more precise: Tooru's performance in them—it did not take him by surprise to spot a thread about the semi finale against Karasuno. What did surprise him, however, was the length of this thread. Tooru, who had actually only logged into the forum today because he was subconsciously in frantic search of solace and self-affirmation, could but click on it. It was a bad decision, for first of all, he was washed away by a wild river of crying smileys mourning the defeat, then he was washed up on a solid shore of “ _But Oikawa-san played amazing!!! ❤_ 's”, before being abruptly pulled back into emotional shipwrecking by a fatal wave of “ _#nohate_ 's:”

>   
>  **Kasumiiix3 wrote:**  
>  _totally agree with y'all!!! it's a shame they lost against karasuno!! just thinking about it makes me cry again! :,-( :,-( :,-( and i still don't get why oikawa-san couldn't pick up that last ball? i mean it didn't look that hard to get, y'know.... #nohate #ilovehimiswear_  
> 

  
What followed was a storm surge of dilettante analyses of the last long rally, mixed up with wild speculations about Tooru's receiving abilities and the absurd assumption that he might not be that much into volleyball anymore. The latter a far too quickly accepted hypothesis among his fangirls for several reasons, namely that it was quite possible that his priorities had shifted due to him starting university soon, and that he had appeared rather composed, he had not even shed a single tear at the end of the match.

After nine pages stuffed with “ _#nohate_ ,” “ _#tooruisstillthebest_ ,” ” _#stopbullyingmybb!_ ,” “ _#bitchesout!!!_ ,” and three banned users, Tooru was a case of curiosity killed the cat. Strangled by his self-doubts, he choked on air and deleted his account without further ado. Not because he was generally unable to take any criticism, but because even before reading the whole thread he had known that it was true. It was nobody's fault but his that Aoba Johsai had lost this match. He was said to be able to draw the full potential out of any team; and Iwaizumi, Hanamaki, and all the others had indeed played great. Tooru, on the contrary, felt like he had forsaken them all by screwing up the last receive. He was nothing but a weak captain, a major disappointment, and, to boot, the assassin of his own dream. The moment when the final whistle had been blown, when his team's fate had been sealed, his self-hate had spat the ugly judgments into Tooru's face. The invisible secretion had etched into his skin, branding him like cattle, so that henceforth every look in the mirror reminded him of who he truly was—and that was certainly not a great king, for great kings neither let their people down, nor do they give the audience the impression of not doing their best when standing on the battlefield.

* * *

So this was it.  
This was how being surpassed, being robbed off the crown, being deprived of the last chance to beat Shiratorizawa and advance to nationals felt like.  
And even though Tooru had feared the fall for so long, had done _everything_ to prevent it, he had completely failed to generate a disaster recovery plan direly needed to survive the age beginning the moment of his disempowerment. This cruel age that had the impudence to declare Tooru's head a stage and host a casting show for the worst kind of thoughts there. From all corners of his mind, the many descendants of shame, self-contempt, and self-reproaches crawled into the spotlight, snatched the microphone, and delivered the best performance of their life. The queue of participants seemed endless, and Tooru, tied to his lonely seat in the first line by a newly moved in depressive episode, was doomed to endure the humiliating spectacle all day and all night.

Incapable of turning his back on his ancient demons, the brunette could but cling to his ~~very best defense strategy~~ eating disorder as if it was the holy grail. So when the ringing of the school bell marked the beginning of today's lunch break now, Tooru forthwith fetched his bento box from his school bag, opened the lid, and sought sanctuary in the faultless set-up of evenly chopped vegetable sticks, grilled chicken salad, two identical halves of a hard-boiled egg, a rice ball, six cherry tomatoes, and a high protein bar. Nothing for dessert. Of course not. The last few days had not exactly gone well for him food-wise, meaning the control of his evening food intake had slipped through his fingers time and again, and he was thus trying to put things back on track by planning both breakfast and lunch even more meticulously than usual. The whole chaos a consequence of Tooru being devastated yet unable to cry after the semi final. For in spite of knowing that he had felt as miserable as his teammates—even Iwaizumi had been overwhelmed by tears—something in him had just shut down, denying him any access to his despair. Entirely controlled by shock and pride, he had not had another choice but to be found playing both the ideal captain and the human incarnation of hypocrisy to the bitter end. His voice had praised his friends, thanked the audience, and persisted in his viewpoint when talking to Ushijima.

After the match, time had passed disturbingly quickly. One minute Tooru had stood in the damp silence of the changing room, the next he had sat on the bus between numerous pairs of red-rimmed eyes. At some point, the last sniffling had died unspectacularly. A circumstance which had left Tooru feeling like the commander of a troop fumigated by a poison gas attack committed by a reality he had failed to avert. Every single member of his team had had the right to be sad, to be disappointed, to cry, except for him, because he had done such a lousy job. . .  
Nearly ripped into pieces by the pressure of guilt, Aoba Johsai's number 1 had humbly said goodbye to his teammates and the coaches once they had arrived back at school. After that, it had been Iwaizumi and him on a wordless walk home, and eventually it had only been him turning around the corner, killing the last few meters, and coming home to an empty house.  
The instant he had switched on the light, the pain in his chest had become unbearable and, notwithstanding that it had not been Monday, Tooru's feet had carried him directly into the kitchen. Fingers administered by the one habit that never failed to wrangle some tears out of him, he had rumbled through the kitchen boards until he had found a package of zwieback which no-one bothered to eat, not even in case of sickness. Tooru had hence been in possession of an almost untouched package of dust-dry bread that had been hard to swallow, especially without any liquid. To deprive himself of the latter had been a conscious decision. Drinking enough while binging was actually one of his most essential rules since it made puking astonishingly easy. He had not wanted it to be easy on said evening, though. He had wanted it to hurt, for he had been convinced to deserve nothing but punishment. The fact that he had barely taken a sip from his water bottle after the match had come handy against this background. And **hell** , it had hurt _so much_ to rip the adhesive mash from his stomach walls in the act of regurgitating. The sick had clogged Tooru's esophagus repeatedly, each time making him fear his thorax would explode. Due to the suffocating pain he had broken into a cold sweat, face finally wet and fingers relentlessly torturing his irritated throat in order to drive his gag reflex to achieve top performance. Not even biting a hole into the glove he had been wearing on his right hand had had a lessening effect on his self-imposed penalty. He had only permitted himself to stop when he had been absolutely certain that he had brought everything up. By then, his nostrils had been blocked with orange-colored vomit and snot, and he had been crying his eyes out because he had hated himself profoundly. It had not mattered to him that he had scored several points during the match and that in volleyball not the better individual player but the better team wins. His rigid black-and-white way of thinking only rewarded efforts that lead to success, whilst it annulled every bit of endeavor and every hint of steady improvement that did not bring the desired results.

By the time his parents had come home that night, Tooru had at least managed to take a shower and put on fresh clothes. Confronted with his downhearted state, their faces had visibly been overrun by surprise and worry, their son's puffy cheeks and red eyes speaking volumes about the match's outcome.  
Tooru, however, had only been able to interpret his parents' speechlessness as profound disappointment. When solicitously asked about the broken vein in his left eye—a keepsake of exhaustive vomiting—he had struggled with the poor imitation of a smile and lied about an unfortunate ball contact. After the spare exchange of words, he had holed up in his room, headphones on and world blocked out. Fortunately, his parents had spared him further questions and had just accepted his lack of appetite considering that he had to come to terms with the unglamorous end of his high school volleyball career.  
A challenge in which Tooru had utterly failed so far, as proved by the fact that he had puked the tears off his chest almost every evening since the lost semi final. According to his twisted logic, crying when throwing up was acceptable, natural. Sitting around and doing nothing but feeling sorry for himself was not. Somebody like him was in no position to waste his time with self-pity or to expect sympathy from other people. In fact, he rejected the latter by completely hushing up the recent defeat. His biggest fear being that in an open discussion somebody would sooner or later tell him face to face that it was his fault—and that was something Tooru definitely would not be able to stand. He was _so terribly sorry_ , and rushing headlong into ritual menu planning, exercising, stuffing, and puking regulated his emotions par excellence. For the most part, his neurotic tactics whitewashed his guilt and distracted him from the increasingly growing sadness hogging his heart. They did not rescue him from being minced by self-loathing, though, and they surely did not prevent him from wishing he could turn back time, either. Suddenly, all he wanted was another chance to practice harder, to become better, and to change the hapless course of events into a more tolerable reality. For how was he ever supposed to build a future on the unreliable foundation his life had degenerated into?

Squinting his overtired eyes, Tooru slowly shifted his gaze. Outside, a strong breeze drove a flock of tattered clouds resembling a herd of ragged beggars across the vacant sky, while the classroom filled with the convivial chatter of students grouping together. Normally, this was the time of the day when Tooru either met with Iwaizumi and some of the other guys from the volleyball team or got swallowed by a group of girls asking politely if he would mind having lunch with them. Lately, however, he neither longed for the company of friends nor fans, which had a lot to do with him constantly feeling obliged to cover up his unnaturally low spirits, his deep shame, and his lack of appetite. In recent days, there had been a strange shift in the relationship between him and his sense of hunger. To be quite frank, he hardly felt like eating during the day anymore. Instead, he had come to prefer idly staring at the untouched, ordered structures he created for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. After all, the world on his plate and in his bento box was still flawless, and Tooru yearned to be a part of this perfect order again so bad that he felt too homesick to eat during the day. Sadly, the mere act of staring at his food did not hand him the key to reopen the door to the throne room. It did, however, evoke an odd kind of elation in him, for even in exile he still regarded himself as being the only person deciding what he ate and what not. Albeit it was nothing else than an assumed control, it had turned into Tooru's only remaining source of pride. His volleyball skills and captain qualities long sorted out as such sources by his uncompromising perfectionism.

An abrupt rise of giggling commanded his attention back into the classroom. Lips automatically taking the shape of an overused smirk, Tooru put the lid back on his lunch box and got up from his chair, signalizing the group of girls eyeing him curiously from the front of the classroom that he already had other plans. Smoothly, he stowed his lunch box in his school bag, shouldered the latter, and waved an apparently carefree “Itadakimasu, ladies!” at the girls, before ambling out of the door. With the chorus of high-pitched voices greeting back still echoing in his ears, his memory reminded him how they had disassembled his latest performance on the court. Good thing he had not been born ugly, because then there certainly would not be any of his fangirls left by now.

Ignoring the sharp twinge in his chest, Tooru made his way along the corridor and, once he had made sure no teacher was around, glanced at his smartphone. Despite the strict cell phone ban at school, almost every student carried his phone along and took advantage of the unobserved moments breaks and restroom trips offered. Tooru was obviously no exception in this respect. Swiftly unlocking his phone, the sight of tiny numbers sitting on the icons of various chat programs informed him of a bunch of unread messages. Four of them were emails, which he decided to check first since he was relatively sure that one of them was from his parents, who had gone on their long-awaited holiday three days ago.  
Against the odds, none of the mails lying in his inbox had been sent to him from his mother's or father's email address. Instead, two were newsletters from sportswear-selling websites, the third one was an advertising for premium membership from his email provider, and the last one was rather inconclusive. Originating from afriend@mymail.jp and sent shortly before the beginning of today's first period, the subject solely read “YOU.” Surely this was no fanmail. Firstly, because Tooru's fangirls did not have a tendency to use capital letters when writing to him, and secondly, because their email addresses usually included either the girls' real names or some kind of unambiguously feminine nickname. Without thinking any further about it, Tooru opened the ominous mail. The visible lack of hearts and smileys confirmed his guess at first glance: no fanmail. He had not been prepared for the message awaiting him, though.

>   
>  **From:** afriend@mymail.jp  
>  **To:** oikawataichousan-no1@mymail.jp  
>  **Subject:** YOU
> 
> **_Oikawa-san,_ **  
>  **_I know you're making yourself sick after eating. Don't deny it. I heard you throwing up at the Little Venice the other day and I know for a fact that that wasn't the first time. Do you have any idea how dangerous eating disorders are, especially for someone training as hard as you do? Seriously, this needs to stop as quickly as possible!_ **  
>  **_a friend_ **  
> 

  
**Fuck!** This could not be for real! Overwhelmed by blind panic, Tooru shoved the unwelcome message into the digital trash bin by frantically hitting the "delete" button. The sight of his cleared inbox did not stop the shaking of his hands or the dolorous beating behind his sternum. Shelled by one annihilating question after the next—who was the mailing's addressee? Why did this person even bother? And what was Tooru supposed to do now?—he rushed down the stairs, into the cellar, and squeezed himself into the first room that came along, which happened to be a broom closet.

Face burning and teeth chattering, Tooru tried his best to revive his composure, but for some reason he did not succeed. Instead, anxiety and shame flooded his veins, reminding him of how _bad_ he had actually been feeling lately. Yes, somewhere deep inside he knew precisely that the only thing keeping him functioning was his preoccupation with food, exercising, and puking. With his parents still gone for the next three weeks, his eating disorder enjoyed free hand, instigating him daily to tell Iwaizumi goodbye at the corner where they always parted after practice, so Tooru could go straight into the next supermarket.  
Once there, the brunette student strolled through the long aisles like a sleepwalker, reading one list of ingredients after another, just to pack his shopping basket with two kinds of products: Those he considered healthiest and those he loved to puke. Categorizing food according to his internalized rules was not only a cinch, but it also gave him a sense of success he no longer experienced in any other area of life, particularly not volleyball. On his way home then, a deceptive anticipation kicked in, temporarily expelling the heaviness in his legs that made getting out off bed more difficult with each passing day. The rest of the evening always passed like a dream, with his phone muted and no-one waking Tooru up. It was just him and eating, puking, and lunch preparation disguised as peaceful living. The rushing of blood in his ears and the familiar feeling of dissociation after vomiting the only substitutes for his lost throne.

And now somebody wanted to snatch that away from him by calling it an eating disorder, a disease, even a _danger_! The term "eating disorder" alone made Tooru shiver in disgust. Albeit his inner, highly intelligent analyst was fully aware that his eating behavior was indeed abnormal, his pride occupied its usual position at the front line and vehemently rejected the diagnosis. He was not sick. This was just how he coped with pressure, stress, and the dreadful rest of his inadequate emotions. Whoever had dared to send him this stupid email probably just wanted to screw him up, because Tooru was rather famous at school for being both an excellent student and an outstanding volleyball player. Some people just did not grudge him the things he was working his ass off for! But there was no way that Tooru would let himself be affected by other people's envy and ill-will! In the piercing light of his cell phone's display, he clicked his way back into the virtual trash bin and typed a few jeering words.

>   
>  **From:** oikawataichousan-no1@mymail.jp  
>  **To:** afriend@mymail.jp  
>  **Subject:** Re: YOU
> 
> **_Hahaha :-D what are you talking about, weirdo??_ **  
> 

  
With this patronizing reply sent, Tooru hoped the issue to be removed from the table once and for all. He truly did not need some anonymous “friend” endangering his secret. Who was this guy anyway? Tooru was relatively positive it was a guy. No girl had ever written to him so bluntly or had had the nerve to follow him into the men's restroom. Yet, he was admittedly at a loss over the question of who was hiding behind the plain nickname. Were the two of them actually friends in real life? Was that the reason behind the nickname? If this was indeed the case, then there was a good chance that _a friend_ was on Aoba Johsai's volleyball team. What spoke against this theory was the fact that his friends were not the type of people taking a detour by writing an email when they could simply talk to their captain in person. This email-thing was too complicated, too distant.  
A sudden realization paralyzed Tooru's thinking process and made his heart not only skip one but two beats. Whoever wrote him the email was most likely too disgusted by his secret to address the issue in an actual conversation. That was it, wasn’t it?  
Deeply upset about what Tooru found to be the only logical explanation for the situation, he stared down at his phone, stinging eyes blinking rapidly. To top it all, at that very moment a new email by none other than _a friend_ fluttered into his inbox, stating ****  
_Don't play dumb!!! You know exactly what I'm talking about!_  
  


The quick answer horrified Tooru even more, awaking in him the maddening urge to move, to run for hours, to practice a hundred jump serves, to work on his insufficient self. At the same time, the itching discomfort running up and down his spine further fueled his speculations concerning _a friend_ 's identity. If this guy was really part of Tooru's circle of friends, then he was currently only a few meters away, awaiting Tooru's response while comfortably munching his lunch. This was really a nightmare come true!

 ** _So?_** hid Tooru his shock by faking indifference, all along wishing he could turn his back on reality by either going on an excessive jog or by running home, where he would binge on chocolate pudding, milk bread and strawberry cheesecake ice cream, so he could puke it all back up. His stomach's sudden grumbling like an acoustic approval, chasing his fear of being disclosed like a watchdog on an intruder.

Much to Tooru's dismay, he again had not had to wait long for _a friend_ 's next unwelcome reply:  
**_So?? Don't you get it?! YOU NEED HELP!!!_**

The characters practically screamed in Tooru's face, their persistence pushing him back against the wall, enabling the biting cold of the concrete to seep through his school uniform and infect his skin with goose bumps. But... _help?_ Not on any terms! Only people with real problems required help and he certainly was not one of them. He had been managing his diet totally fine since years and hence had no reason at all to listen to some exclamation mark-obsessed anon using an ugly default picture as his avatar!

 ** _Bullshit! :-)_** was thus all his anger and stubbornness instructed his fingers to shoot, whereby they provoked an immediate counter-attack:  
**_Stop giving me these stupid smiley faces!!! You know very well that I'm right!! So why don't we start figuring out how to help you?_**

 _We?_ Tooru's eating disorder reacted extremely allergically against the idea of someone breaking into the isolating ~~castle~~ dungeon it had forced Tooru to build during the past years. Not only was no-one supposed to see what was going on in there, but Tooru himself was far from being ready to voluntarily share any of his complex feelings and thoughts concerning food. That would be way too embarrassing, since it would equate openly confessing that he had lost control—which was something he just could not admit to himself. He therefore tried to rout the annoying anon with a mocking **_Fuck you! :-) :-) :-)_**. The strategy was at least partly crowned with success, as _a friend_ 's only response was **_Write me when you're ready to talk! (=better sooner than later!!!)_**

Lower lip clamped between the sharp tips of his teeth, Tooru freed himself from the uneasiness of the conversation by deleting the emails. He could, however, not escape its aftermath that struck him in the form of an acid regurgitation burning the back of his throat.  
Left in no mood to join his friends for the rest of the break—they probably assumed him to have lunch with a bunch of girls anyway, as this was not at all uncommon for him—Tooru flipped through his phone, looking for a distraction that would get a grip on his exorbitant panic. To know that one of his friends could lift his secret at any time was unnerving beyond description; the only way for him to calm down was shifting his focus to one of the two things always taking up too much space in his head: volleyball and food. Since practice would not start until late afternoon, Tooru was left with the latter and instantly began composing a shopping list for the rest of the week. If him having failed on the court had anything to do with his diet, he would find the error and eliminate it, even if it meant to modify his mother's recipes, to weigh each and every ingredient twice, or to ban some foods from his mental list of healthy foods!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to all of you who left kudos/favorited my story after the last chapter! :-) It's good to see some people are interested in this fic.  
> Today's special thank you goes to Sassy for leaving such a lovely comment after reading the second chapter! _*thank you very much!*_


	4. »I believe in all of you!« Just not in myself.

Slowly but steady, the treadmill of compulsiveness took its complete toll on Tooru, because he was trying. _Really_ trying, as in entirely avoiding the aisles with candies and cookies, and as in typing down the nutritional values of each bite he consumed, and as in controlling his food intake down to the very last gram.  
Never before in his entire life had he been so thankful for being home alone, with no-one there to witness him scampering through the kitchen at unholy hours, adding rice corn after rice corn to the cup standing on the digital kitchen scales until he was as safe as houses about the amount of rice for the rice balls he later intended to form. Hands then directed by the commitment of an obsessional neurotic, the incredibly deep hole in his soul ached to be filled. He was _so hungry_ , but also _so homesick_. The latter usually suppressed his appetite for the most part of the day; and the crusade of hunger only began the instant Tooru walked through the front door in the evenings. ~~Still, he did not need the stuffing and puking.~~ It was exactly then that he missed stuffing and puking like an old friend, like a long overdue conversation with his best friend. He could never tell Iwa-chan, though. Never as in never ever.

After 2 1/2 days characterized by an intolerable restlessness that Tooru had not been able to shake off, regardless of how long and intense practice and additional work outs had been, he found himself at a supermarket checkout, cramming two boxes of Kellogg's Frosties, six liters milk, a packet of strawberry-flavored cacao powder, a package of vanilla-caramel ice cream, and a whole crowd of chocolate pudding tumblers into his sports bag. A blink later, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his sparely lit room, shoveling spoon after spoon of soothing childhood memories into his mouth. In front of him a large mixing bowl serving as the cereal's temporary home, next to him the already emptied ice cream package. With his body acting thoroughly on automatic, his inexpressive pupils targeted at the gaily colored card game printed on the backs of the Frosties'. The drawn forest animals with their jolly faces and beady eyes offered unconditional friendship and best entertainment to everybody, without exception. The desire that Tooru would have loved to be in good company too did not reach his heart, for he had _this_ here. This alleged kind of controlled falling that removed him from reality and placed him where he could finally take a break from racking his brain about how much of a disappointment he was. The never ending list of sickening expectations frenziedly bitten to death, buried in gastric acid, and ripped from its warm grave by Tooru's gag reflex.

After commuting twice between his room and the bathroom, about 2.300,00 Yen worth of food were eradicated and the brunette felt far too lightheaded to still adhere to a concept of himself, to wonder who he was, who he could have been, or who he might become in the future. For the moment, he could not care less about himself or the acute threat called _a friend_.

* * *

His parents phoned him on a regular basis, just to have all their calls answered by Tooru's best simulation of preoccupation. Officially, he had got his hands full with the usual load of school work, volleyball practice, and meetings with friends. In truth, however, he had been avoiding the latter more and more frequently because he had recently started dating a very ingratiating depressive episode that deeply disliked sharing him with other people. So day in, day out, it handed him one brazen lie after another to discreetly pull himself out of amicable obligations. Simultaneously, it instructed him to sell his friends and fangirls the illusion of his permanent presence by periodically posting on all social media sites he was registered on. Dropping a twinkling selfie here and writing a few joke-pregnant comments and posts over there did the trick. People no longer differentiated between a person's virtual presence and the real one. It was no surprise then that Tooru's retreat went unnoticed.

* * *

He did not only buy a new box of gloves and new cleaning agents for the bathroom, but also adopted the habit of binging in the bathroom in order to save unnecessary steps. With all of his evenings transforming into lonely slaughter festivals, Tooru killed off droves of "unhealthy" and "forbidden" foods and sacrificed them all to vomiting.

He was in control.

He was everything but in control, indicated the incommode beating behind his ribs, the rising number of head and stomach aches, and his unusual yet insatiable appetite for salty foods. Nonetheless, Tooru found himself to be unable to break out of the vicious circle of addiction. What was out there anywhere?  
' _Nothing, baka!_ ' the well-coordinated duo consisting of his eating disorder and his depression immediately teamed up to bring his already ailing survival instinct to its knees. ' _There's absolutely nothing for losers like you! Do you remember this one time when Iwaizumi told you that you were the partner he can boast about? Well, he surely won't ever repeat that after your shitty performance against Karasuno! Don't you think it strange that he hasn't brought up the match once, though he had plenty of chances? Not even you can be so dumb to think this coincidental! You know damn well that he's just so disappointed and done with you that he doesn't give a shit about you anymore! And soon all your brainless fangirls will obsess about somebody else! And do you know why? Because fugly people with crappy personalities don't deserve to be loved! Hell, you aren't even capable of loving other people! The only girlfriend you ever had dumped you after two weeks, and you? You weren't the tiniest bit heartbroken! Do you remember what you were instead? Do you remember, Tooru-chan? No? Let me give you a hint then: You were relieved! Because you could again practice whenever you wanted and eat whatever you liked without anybody bugging you to go to the movies or to have cake at some fancy cafe! Yes, even back then your priorities laid with nobody but yourself. So stop whining and run for another hour, you selfish asshole!_ '

This was not true! At least not all of it, for Tooru was not ugly! Really, he was—  
hamster cheeks,  
cracked lips,  
some small yet unhandsome pimples on the chin,  
a slightly but constantly stuffed nose,  
and a little huskier voice than normally.  
Against all this, Tooru—by rationalizing that pimples were perfectly normal for people his age and that it was not unusual to show hints of a mild cold during this season of the year—tried to convince himself over and over again that he was still _somewhat_ attractive. None of the symptoms had anything to do with him being sick and ugly!

He changed his mind the second he spotted the first red pinhead-sized dots under his eyes one morning. Although he had no explanation for them, he knew then and there that he could not go see a doctor since he was fairly certain the dots were somehow or other connected to the frequent vomiting. Hence, Tooru saw no alternative but to rip his mother's cosmetic drawer open. The waterproof high coverage concealer, which guaranteed 24 hours of perfection no matter what, was a quick find and matched his complexion surprisingly well. After some initial difficulties to melt the thick cream into his skin, the treacherous dots were superbly covered up. Along with them, the circles under Tooru's brown eyes had disappeared. A result that led to the stunning but false impression that he had, against his habit, slept a fair sum of hours last night. Yet, the mere knowledge of the dots' existence made Tooru feel sick, made him want to skip breakfast and hide under his covers.  
~~He was not ugly.~~

* * *

Not on any terms could he ever have dinner at Iwaizumi's or his sister's place again. Albeit both his sister and Iwaizumi's mother were familiar with Tooru apparently casually requesting detailed information about the ingredients of the dishes they served, none of them would ever dare to dream of him losing the trust in other people's cooking or in prepared food from the supermarket. It was a consistent consequence of Tooru's overbred skepticism, though, since a meal he had not composed himself could not be documented the way his eating disorder demanded it to be documented, and with prepared and packed foods he could never be a hundred percent certain the ingredients lists were complete. What if something had been forgotten to be put on them? According to Tooru's twisted logic, consuming unknown quantities of food or unknown ingredients would be his death! Concurrently, his logic made a generous exception for his binge foods, for as long as he brought everything back up, there was no cause for concern. For reason of sickness, the well-known fact that digestion begins in the mouth did not interfere at all with Tooru's logic.

* * *

By the time two-thirds of his parents' holiday was over, there was puke on Tooru's face, on his hands, on his hoodie, in his hair, and on his immediate environment. He had no good explanation for the mess. He only knew it was about midnight and that he was too weak to clean up the bathroom and take a shower because he had just binged and purged five times in succession. _Wow!_ Five times! He had officially broken his own record! He should be proud of himself!  
But instead of complacently smiling, instead of surfing on the high of triumph and glory, he was so desolate he burst into bitter tears, smeared his hands on his filthy hoodie, and dragged himself back to his room. Knees sore, hands shaking, throat burning, and stomach a tight sailor knot that could not be untied in a million years, Tooru collapsed on his futon like a dying animal. He was terribly dazed and thirsty, but the water bottle on his desk seemed miles away and, judging by his abdominal cramps, his body most likely would not be able to keep anything down. He thus postponed the idea of having a good drink of water until later on and shut his heavy eyelids, head aching as if it had been crushed between two bulky American football players and ears hurting as if his tympanic membranes had been savagely attacked with saw blades.

Enclosed by the sour stench of vomit and the hard knocking of his heart, Tooru lacked the words to describe how unhappy and disgusted he was with himself. During the last few days, his usage of mouthwash and peppermints had drastically increased due to the paranoid belief that he was permanently smelling of sick. Yet, no-one had brought up the issue so far and Tooru sincerely hoped he was just imagining things. But then again, the tears on his face and the puke sticking to him surely were not a trick his mind was playing on him. . .  
Poorly, Tooru wiped his face with his damp right sleeve, while his vivid fantasy created yet again a scenario featuring the public exposure of his secret life and his consequential social ostracism. Yes, people would detest and avoid him—even his family and friends—and they would have every right to do so.

Despite this toxic assumption, the misused fingers of his right hand searched the near floor for his smartphone and, when finally found, unlocked it with a slow move. Stomach empty and contact list jam-packed, Tooru found himself at a loss. He had countless followers and friends on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, but he did not know a single person he could trust with his actual situation, because nobody was interested in a discharged king and his problems. Yet, talking to someone was really all Tooru presently longed for.  
No, it was not.  
Yes, it was!  
No! Yes!! **NO!! YES!!!** _Help!!!!_ The ambivalence was so unbearable that Tooru gagged again and reflexively gulped down the bile that had just shot up his esophagus. _Ouch!_ Swallowing a lit match felt probably strikingly similar. . .  
For the first time ever confessing to himself that he was indeed ill, Tooru wrapped his shivering body into his blanket and opened his mail inbox. The messages he had exchanged with _a friend_ a little while ago still laid in the trash bin, awaiting him like the Father in the Return of the Prodigal Son.

 _ **Hey friend freak! ;-D**_ he slowly typed, his view so blurred by tears that the world around him had lost all sharp edges. Was not it ironic that Tooru with his vigilant eye and his incomparably keen perception had failed to see that his defense strategy had turned against him, that he had completely lost control? Yes, it was. And even more so embarrassing. Truly embarrassing. The only comfort in the whole dilemma being the new email in his inbox: _**Yes hello!!?**_

' _You better stop writing that anon_ now _or things will get much, much worse!_ ' A sudden rush of panic lassoed Tooru's courage like a cowboy the straying cattle, resulting in him immediately discarding his initial plan.  
_**Nothing 8-) Just checking if you're still up that late on a school day :-D**_

 _A friend_ 's reply consisted of a somewhat confused _**OK**_ as well as the far too intimate question _**How was eating today?**_

 _ **Good! :-)**_ lied Tooru forthwith, defeated by the misbelief that he was defending his dignity.

_**You managed to keep dinner down then?** _

Vis-à-vis with this even more personal question, Tooru's embarrassment promptly increased to the point where his tears almost evaporated on his burning hot cheeks. This oafish anon really had no sensitivity whatsoever!

 _ **Nope, but spare me the lecture. The rest of my diet is A++! d(-_^) b**_ It was not even a lie, yet _a friend_ flared up as always:  
_**You mean it's all over the top and that you make yourself sick a lot, right!?**_

Yes, it was and yes, he did. But admitting this to himself hurt as much as thinking of the lost semi-finale, or his lack of captain qualities, or his total inability to polish his volleyball skills until he was at least to some extent satisfied with himself. Heartsick, Tooru stared at the display before wiping his face again, this time with his left sleeve. In the course of the last few minutes, the fast-flowing stream of his tears had undergone a metamorphosis into viscous tear drops sporadically plopping from his red eyes.  
_**Why do you care?**_ he wondered jadedly, still struggling to understand why his idea of healthy had failed so miserably. Where had he gone wrong? He never had fast food anymore, he always chose nutrient rich foods above calorie rich foods, he regularly ate nori, seaweed, and algae (since they contained lots of minerals, magnesium, and iron), as well as mussels and shrimps (fantastic sources of proteins and B-vitamins). He had even forced himself to getting used to the nasty taste and texture of Natto (for it included extremely high levels of the bone-building vitamin K2), and he only deviated from his diet rules when working out or puking afterwards. Sport was healthy, and vomiting, considered by itself, was a natural reflex permitting the body to free itself from harmful stomach contents. Making yourself throw up could thus not be that bad—or so Tooru had always assumed until his body had started bearing the noticeable consequences of vomiting three to five times per diem for days on end. And now—  
Tooru's racing train of thought derailed in sight of a new mailing.  
_**I take that as a yes! And I care because WAIT! Why do you even ask??? I just do, OK?!? That's completely normal!!!**_

No, it was not. At least not for Tooru. Of course, he knew that mutual caring was supposed to be every friendship's essence—and he still assumed _a friend_ to be a member of his circle of friends—yet many of his friends actually disliked him for his "disgusting personality." Whether this was a joke or not, he could no longer tell. He had considered it one for the longest time. Recently, however, he was having his doubts because he was not on friendly terms with himself and tonight he had even reached the point where he was, frankly speaking, utterly nauseated by his own behavior. Against this background, the anonymous words had quite an effect on Tooru: They peeled one of the suffocating layers from his self-hate-crusted soul and tickled the corners of his dry lips until they curled up.  
_**Awww! ^_^ I feel sooo loved by my anon fanboy~ ♥ ♡ ;-***_

_**I'm not your fanboy!!!!! Why can't you be serious about this conversation and your condition for once?!?** _

Tooru's genuine smile died like a candle flame in a thunderstorm, with no-one there to protect or relight it. Being serious regarding his "condition" was easier said than done, because seriousness had the bad habit of stripping his soul from the blase attitude and the jocose melodrama Tooru had trained himself to shield behind. Without them, his full attention shifted inexorably to his staggering feelings of shame, inefficiency and self-loathing, which, in turn, activated his rage and granted it free reign—just like it happened to happen now:  
_**You mean serious as in "I just barfed 5 times in a row and now I'm lying in bed crying because I'm so sad and exhausted and I reek of sick, and the only person I can talk to is some anon on the internet who pities me?!" Forget it!!! You and your shitty sympathy pisses me off!!!!!**_

Once put into words, the drasticness of reality broke Tooru's remaining self-control at the neck. Taken captive by anguish and sorrow, he abruptly tossed his phone aside and covered his face with both hands to tame the animalic noise of his snotty sobbing. He was so angry! So dreadfully angry ~~at the world, at _a friend_ ,~~ at himself that he blindly started punching his pillow with all the strength left in his drained body. But no matter how hard the hit, reality did not break. Only Tooru's energy reserves gradually declined and once he had fallen into total motionlessness, his furious war cries subsided as well.  
Ultimately, an eerie silence fell upon the room, lasting until the sudden vibration and the glaring light of Tooru's smartphone invaded it like a group of music-blasting teenagers loud enough to raise the dead. Why could this stupid anon not just stop pestering him? Tooru wanted to be left alone by everyone, including himself, but after a relatively short time his cell hummed a second time. **Damnit!** Who on earth had taught _a friend_ to be so persistent? Still infuriated, though not as much as before, Tooru cursed hoarsely, grabbed his phone, and opened the new messages. The first one read:  
_**I'm not pitying you!!! I never did and I never will, Oikawa-san!!!**_

The second one was a bit longer:  
_**My apologies if anything I wrote hurt you!! Such was truly not my intention!!! Please write back and stop crying, OK?! I can't hand you a tissue from here but I promise we'll get you some help!!!!!**_

Maybe this anon did possess some sensitivity after all. Problem was just that Tooru was too scared to seek help for various reasons. A potential restriction with respect to his practice and working out schedule was one of them. Other people intervening in his diet was the other. And then there was also the disappointment he expected from his family. His father would blame his mother and vice versa, and his sister most probably would not understand him either, for she had grown up under the same roof and was doing absolutely fine. It was only him who was broken beyond repair. Hence, it was also incumbent upon himself to get better again.

_**That's really cute of you, you little pest ;-* but you've to understand that I can't get help. My family would be so disappointed and I can't risk getting benched now! The school year's almost over and there's no way in hell I'll miss out on the last weeks of practice! I'll just have to try harder to get better again. It's really no big deal, anon! I haven't always been as bad as these past weeks, so I know I can handle things on my own!** _

_**I thought so too.** _

Seijou's number 1 blinked bewilderedly.  
_**What's that supposed to mean?**_

_**Just that you've been handling things your own way since middle school, but obviously it's not working!!! Making yourself sick has nothing to do with being healthy!!! And neither has your fixation about healthy foods!! Here, read this if you don't believe me:** _  
_**[link], [link], [link], [link], [link]** _  
_**These are all websites about eating disorders. Most contain addresses of counseling services and some even offer online counseling!** _

Websites? Counseling services? Online counseling? Tooru was speechless—which did not happen all that often. Too numb to cry and too perplexed to type, he could but think that _a friend_ was passing the buck. He had no clue what he had expected alternatively from his interlocutor, but certainly not some google search results he could have easily looked up by himself.

 _ **You're so mean**_ he eventually responded, feeling even more desperate and alone than he had been before tonight's email exchange. All for himself, he was not only too ashamed but also too frightened to contact an online counselor, let alone make an appointment at some counseling center. _A friend_ , however, did not comprehend that:  
_**WHAT??? I'm trying to help you!!! How is that being mean??**_

_**You're even more stupid than I thought...** _

_**I'm not!!! I think being too proud to get help when you're sick is what's actually stupid!!! It's high time you stop insulting me and start talking about your problems with someone who's able to help you! Because if you don't, you probably won't be playing volleyball much longer!!** _

_**The Playoffs are over, anon. We lost.**_ was Tooru's sadness's only comment concerning the entire matter. Due to his inadequacy, he had missed his last chance of going to nationals and, even worse, he had robbed Iwaizumi, Hanamaki and Matsukawa of that chance as well. With this in his depression-clouded mind, Tooru could only conclude that it would be best for everyone if he would not join his future university's volleyball team. . .

_**I'm not on your team but even if I were I'd tell you now that this isn't about the Playoffs!!! This is about your HEALTH and your FUTURE!!!!! You get this, don't you??** _

Whether the first or the second sentence astounded him more, Tooru truly could not say. For him, who equated his athletic performance with his value as a person, the Playoff's outcome had been and still was of fundamental importance. Perhaps _a friend_ had no understanding of this kind of mindset since he was not into volleyball? Or sports in general? Who the heck was this guy?  
Tired and annoyed of the endless guessing game, Tooru intentionally ignored _a friend_ 's question and bluntly asked _**Who are you?**_ , while expanding the circle of potential suspects. Based on _a friend_ 's usage of polite forms and his overall style of writing, Tooru estimated the guy to be a) a bit younger than he himself was (probably a year or two) and b) surely not famous for his eloquence and mild temper. Yet, these findings led Tooru nowhere because an awful lot of students met these criteria. Furthermore, he could not exclude the possibility that _a friend_ had lied to set Tooru on the wrong track. What if they were on the same team after all?

Sighing, he opened _a friend_ 's latest message:  
_**Don't ask for my name!! It really doesn't matter who I am! This here is about YOU!!! I understand that you're disappointed about ranking third. I know how hard you always practice and push yourself and how much you wanted to beat Shiratorizawa and go to nationals. But for as long as I can remember losing a match or a tournament has never left you like this!!! It has always motivated you!! But now you seem so down and depressed.....and that's NOTHING like you!!!**_

 _ **Right...**_ This smart alec anon knew Tooru so goddamn well that it was literally sickening! Without an option to spit out the freshly surged up gastric juices, Tooru could but swallow again, fingers tightening around his phone in the process. If he knew his fighting spirit's current location, he would have long dragged it home, but he had not the slightest indication where to start searching. He was just tired and mad, and the next message carried things way too far.

_**You're not being sarcastic here, are you?? Because this is really not the time to be!!! I did some research on the internet and read that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness!!! Did you know that?? And did you know that the later you seek help, the lesser is your chance to fully recover??! So why do you still hesitate?? You just told me yourself that things are very bad at the moment, and whatever you may think, this isn't only due to the Playoffs! You doing bad is far more than a phase you can overcome on your own!! There are reasons why you've been sick for years(!!!) and I think you urgently need professional help to solve them all out!!!** _

The words broke into Tooru's heart and stole the last bit of hope away from him. As much as he wanted to protest, he knew _a friend_ was right: Tooru had tried time and again, only to end on being on his last legs. He would not make it on his own. . . The awfully sharp knife of truth cut so deep into Tooru's pride that he fell into a frenzy due to blood loss:  
_**Bleh!!! :-P My dear anon fanboy did some research on the internet?! WOW!!! Just reading this makes me wanna puke again!!! ^__^ You know what? I don't need an anon baka who pretends to be my friend but isn't friendly enough to talk to me in person!!!**_

Tooru spared himself the humiliation to add that he knew his conversation partner was patently too disgusted to deal with him face to face, though it had been clear right from the start! If only he had taken his inner voice's advice and had not contacted _a friend_ tonight! This guy did not even hesitate to baldly lie about the reason behind his persistent refusal to blow of the covers:  
_**You wouldn't have listened if I'd tried!!! You hate me!!!**_

Accusing Tooru of hating one of his friends was absurd! If anything, it was the other way around! Scrunching his nose, he clothed his profound disapproval in a _**Sure, friend, sure**_ , accompanied by a sassy smiley proudly presenting its middle finger. The second he had hit the "send" button, he marked a friend's email address as spam and put his phone away, not bothering to plug in the charging cable and thereby satisfying the battery's visible demand for power. Hugging his pillow for lack of better company and comfort, Tooru just quietly wept and swore to himself that this had been the first and the last time he had ever tried to reach out for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your lovely reviews, Ya_ya_rose and Sassy! ;-)
> 
>  
> 
> And yes, there'll be Iwa-chan in the next chapter *finally!*


	5. »You still doing the King thing?«

Whether there was a new message in his spam folder or not, Tooru could not tell. During the past three days, the needle of his inner compass had navigated him safely along the steep cliffs of contact abandonment and straightaway onto the open sea of closet suffering. Mute like a pirate whose tongue had been cut out, he kept silent about the fact that the water was already up to his neck. While his psyche gasped for breath, Tooru was highly disturbed about still gaining followers on Instagram and finding another rose-scented confession letter in his shoe locker at school. How could anybody be attracted to a drowning person? That was sickening! Just like it was sickening that he was basically forced to infernally pay attention to not rub off his concealer in public or to always hide the inflamed corner of his mouth on all of his selfies by sticking out his tongue.

Fingertips throbbing from too many volleyballs smashed too hard, he precautiously palpated the sensitive area right beneath his ears. He had no inkling why it was hurting or why the swelling just would not subside, but the longer he scrutinized the young man in the mirror, the more voluminous his hamster cheeks appeared to be.  
' _Maybe you just got fat, Tooru-chan~_ '  
Though it was rather unlikely, the setter was suddenly terrified and, without batting an eye, angled for the scales neatly standing under one of the bathroom shelves: 69.8.  
That was about two kilos less than he had weighed before the Playoffs. So he had actually lost weight?! But that did not make sense! Why was his face screaming 'weight gain,' whilst the scales claimed 'weight loss'? Endlessly confused, Tooru stepped off the scales, emptied his lungs with a painfully deep breath, and stepped back on the square-shaped measuring tool, only to be confronted with the previous' number's identical twin. **Shit!** If the idea of gaining weight had scared him, than the fact that he had lost weight made him want to step out off his skin because he could not tell what exactly he had lost! Fat? Water? Or—and this was his worst fear—muscle? Please not the latter! Anything but that!  
Goaded by an irrational panic, Tooru weighed himself a third and even a fourth time, yet the red-glowing number did not reveal any information about the circumstances of its birth. It just did an excellent job as the latest addition to Tooru's private torture chamber.

* * *

"You alright, Oikawa?" Coach Irihata's calm but indubitably concerned voice cut through the thick fog of pain radiating from the biting cramp in Tooru's right calf. It was the second time within five days that Seijou's number 1 stood grimacing in the gym, oppressing a hiss and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Only difference being that it had gone unnoticed the first time, for it had happened right after the warm-up jog when everybody had been busy doing stretching exercises.

"Sure, it's just a cramp." Straightening his shoulders, Tooru flashed the smile that had earned him his coach's trust for the last three years.

"Hm," the black-haired man's mouth hardened in a way the setter had rarely witnessed. "It's not your knee again, is it?" Voice calmer but tenfold intense, Coach Irihata crossed his arms. His probing gaze resting on Tooru's uncharacteristically wanly face.

"No," the truth came easy, but felt wrong anyway. Long accustomed to lying, Tooru feared that he had just failed selling honesty to someone who had trained several generations of high school students and thus smelled every rat. His worries were further aggravated by his own observations. He knew he had not been his top-performing self lately: His stamina had turned gray and his concentration had transformed into a shadow of its former self due to his eating disorder. With both his body and his mind weathering at an alarming fast rate, he was playing more and more balls according to instinct. Although the strategy had been successful so far, it was surely only a matter of time until his decay would be noted and he would be told that he was no longer worthy to be on the team. What if the time had come now?  
The dreadful hunch injected pure anguish into Tooru's spinal canal, paralyzing him from head to toe. Standing straight as a die, he unconsciously held his breath while expecting the absolute worst. What was he supposed to do if he was kicked off the team? And what if this was not exclusively about his performance? What if _a friend_ had given Tooru's secret away? A sour darting flame shot up Tooru's esophagus, boiling his internal organs and putting his tolerance for pain to a test. In a trice, his oral cavity filled with saliva, but just before he got sick of stress, his coach nodded lightly.  
"I know that the last few months were quite intense for you 3rd years. The extra practice for the Playoffs, the Playoffs, and then there was also all the studying for your final exams and the entrance exams for university," he slowly summed up, averting his attention to the tossing practice of the 1st years nearby. "Practice will be over at seven thirty sharp today. No exceptions for anyone."

Tooru swallowed the pool of spit in his mouth before voicing the expected "Hai." It went without saying that he as the captain was to take care of his team's punctuality. It also went without saying that he was going to stop his individual training now in order to assist Kindaichi and Kunimi. The synergy of Coach Irihata's eyebrows and forehead wrinkles indicated a certain dissatisfaction. Tooru was only relieved that he was not the reason for his coach's discontent expression.

 

After practice, a bag of lollipops was passed around in the damp air of the locker room and the wheel of misfortune put Tooru first in line. Under the expectant eyes of his teammates, he did not dare to march to a different drummer. Chirping an apparently grateful "Thank you, Yahaba! Always so good to us~," he picked a scarlet-wrapped lollipop and shoved it in his winter coat's pocket, where it lay like a time bomb, ticking away the last minutes of Tooru's healthy diet for today. Shiyou ga nai.

With his leg still feeling like a fighting dog's chewing bone, Seijou's captain and some other members of the volleyball club got on the bus. Their luggage a whiff of shower gel and deodorant, to which the brunette majorly contributed. Though he was normally a friend of fresh and subtle scents, his paranoia had educated him to better smell of perfume than of sick.

Anesthetized by the bus's steady movements and the mellow warmth Iwaizumi's body emitted, Tooru fell again victim to the sorriness permanently lurking for him. His dull gaze kept on switching between his friends, always searching for the one speaking. Yet, his efforts to engage in the conversation rarely bore fruits: Tooru jumped too late on each train of laughter and missed most opportunities to show off or act upon his inner diva. Each time a chuckle tripped over his chapped lips, he could have sworn the sound had been produced by someone else, just like the words that followed immediately afterwards and ignited further tirades of laughing.  
Secretly studying the fingers of his right hand, Tooru wondered why everybody else was so vivid, whereas he decomposed into never-ending thoughts about food, working out, binging, vomiting, hating and weighing himself. This was certainly not how he had imagined his life to be. . .

By the time Matsukawa said goodbye and left the group, Tooru wished he had not had to lie his way out off the team's trip to their favorite ramen restaurant last Saturday.  
By the time Kunimi said goodbye and left the group, Tooru wished he had directed his undivided attention to the practice of the 1st years instead of thinking about throwing up his lunch.  
By the time Watari said goodbye and left the group, Tooru wished he knew who _a friend_ really was.  
And by the time Hanamaki said goodbye, Tooru wished his eating disorder would just let him be instead of feeding off his life. He was cold and lugubrious and illogically lonely, and these were only some of the many ramifications stealing the quality away from his life.

Upon being nudged by Iwaizumi's elbow, Tooru disentangled himself from his bonding worries and followed his friend's quiet command. Shortly afterwards, the bus stopped, its doors opened with a whooshing noise, and both students got off at their usual stop. A sturdy winter breeze scraped the mist of tiredness, that had encapsulated Tooru during the ride, from his dry skin. Instinctively burying his hands in his pockets and his nose in his checkered scarf, Tooru glued his eyes to the shrinking back of the departing bus and adjusted the position of his sports bag by rolling his right shoulder. The prospect of coming home and having to manage both his eating disorder's exorbitant demands and the great deal of homework was almost too exhausting to keep him going.

"What's up with you?"

"Huh?" Behind the curtain of a pertinacious headache, Tooru had not seen the question coming. His perplexed gaze lost its footing on the bus's back and fell upon Iwaizumi's alert face.  
"You're hoarse, you're tired, you're inattentive, and what on earth happened to the corner of your mouth?" The ruthless fact bombardment lifted Tooru's feelings of uncomfortableness on a whole new level.  
"Oh, that," he shrugged, keeping his body as poised as possible. His lips produced the yellowed copy of an easy smile, as his nervous fingers clasped the lollipop like an amulet freeing its carrier from all telltale signs of illness. "Must be this cold everybody has at the moment. Good looks don't protect against germs, you know?"  
"Obviously a distorted sense of reality doesn't either!" Seijou's number 4 fretfully rolled his eyes, before continuing visually grilling his interlocutor. "Bad enough that Kaneo and Watari missed practice for almost a week because of that damn thing! Be reasonable for once and take a hot bath and get enough sleep tonight, or you'll miss some of our last practice sessions!"  
_Our._ The word alone got Tooru's heart in a headlock and exacerbated the excruciating throbbing behind his temples. Wrinkling his nose, he wittered the stank of imminent graduation, of abandoned teenage dreams and of separating ways leading friends straight into estrangement. Disenchanted, he let go off the useless amulet and saluted, "Aye aye, oka-san!"  
One of Iwaizumi's eyebrows shot down like a hangman's axe—a reaction Tooru was way too familiar with to continue fooling around. His prompt "Sorry! Sorry!" was answered with an anomalously short grunt. ' _Definitely not a good sign_ ,' Tooru thought to himself. If only a hot bath, some matcha and eight hours of sleep could cure him. . .

"How come you're never online before midnight anymore?" Iwaizumi continued his inquisition, his elbow apparently coincidentally brushing against Tooru's as they turned into a small side road. The noise of bypassing cars gradually died down, whereas the ticking of Tooru's personal time bomb grew louder and louder.  
"Just busy feeding my dorama addiction," the brunette's smirk came quick like a shot. At which juncture in time he had transformed into an absolutely full parcel of pain neatly tied up with solid cords of lies, he honestly could not say. He only hoped he would not burst in front of his friend, who now ' _hmm_ 'ed suspiciously and narrowed his green eyes like a cat targeting a mouse.  
Unconsciously speeding up for fear, Tooru experienced the unannounced return of the devilish cramp. This time, however, it did not infest his leg, but his chest, stampeding his heart and minimizing his lung volume. Breathing became a true challenge under these circumstances. If only he was home already!

Twelve steps passed without either of the two high school students saying a single word. Then Iwaizumi ran out of patience and groaned through clenched teeth: "Okay, listen Oikawa: We're all sad we lost the Playoffs. It just sucks! No discussion here! But it's no reason to bury your head in the sand for weeks on end!"  
"Pfft, the Playoffs are all water under the bridge by now! Why would I still care about them when Masato has cheated on Yasu? Can't believe he did that after all they've been through! Unbelievable!" Tooru ignored the unsettling fact that Iwaizumi must have had a very close eye on him altogether. Instead, he got all worked up about his favorite dorama, just to be boxed against the upper arm.  
" _You_ are unbelievable, Assikawa!"  
"Ouch!"  
"I know I'm being repetitive here, but volleyball is still a team sport. We're all in the same loser boat."  
' _And they also all know who had drifted them off the course of winning!_ ' added Tooru's morbidly obese self-loathing. Nearly collapsing under the unbearable burden of remorse, the taller student anchored all ten fingers in the smooth lining of his dark coat's pockets and coerced himself into holding his view straight ahead. Iwaizumi would beat him black and blue if he ever found out that Tooru had not only fucked up on the court, but that he had also had the nerve to puke the ice cream Iwa-chan had treated him to after the final. Much to Tooru's regret, the plan of suppressing any unwelcome memories by avoiding locking eyes with his best friend did not work. Before he even knew it, his bad conscious had pushed him right into the fires of shame hell, where he burned beyond recognition. In front of his inner eye the events leading to the ultimate disaster:

With a hasty "Come on, let's go home. I'd rather die than seeing the award ceremony!" he had practically shoved Iwaizumi away from the thundering applause and Karasuno's climaxing ecstasy. But as expected, Seijou's vice captain had neither been impressed by Tooru's unprecedented bad mood nor by his jostling fingers, and had only stated matter-of-factly: "You really are a crappy guy."  
"'m not!"  
"Sure you are."  
Seconds later, Tooru's hands had come to lie on Iwaizumi's shoulders for good, because the wing spiker had intentionally slowed down his walking pace to a minimum. Confronted with yet another factor of frustration on a day that was already frustrating enough—For what else could a day be that elicited a “kuso kawaii” from Tooru while watching his kouhai play?—Tooru had huffed before more forcefully attempting to push his friend towards the nearest exit. It had been to no use, though, for Iwaizumi had simply acted as if he had been turned to stone. Tooru's rushing "Damnit, Iwa-chan! Move! **Move!** " had hence fallen on deaf ears.

"Home time, _please_ ," had Tooru eventually begged for real, forehead leaning against his friend's neck. In the act, the glasses he hardly ever wore in public had slit up the bridge of his nose. With the frames poking into unusual areas of his face, he had allowed himself to take a short break. He had been looking hideous anyway, given that his left eye had still displayed the remains of the popped vein. Iwaizumi had presumably interpreted the redness as the outcome of a tearful night and had therefore not posed any questions. That he had earlier discovered Tooru moping in the very last row, all alone and completely sunken into himself, had told him more than enough about Tooru's emotional state.

"Alright," Iwaizumi had at some point sighed and agreed. "Home time." The arrangement of pensive syllables had worked like a pre warning for Tooru, who had briefly nodded and deeply inhaled the conversant scent. If they had not been out off the audience's focus, Iwaizumi had never tolerated Tooru's clinginess. Truly thankful for the moment of serenity, the brunette had swallowed a lump the size of a mountain, before apologizing for yesterday's loss by whispering a voiceless "Gomennasai, yurushite kudasai, Hajime," in the cozy fabric of the blue hoodie.  
After that, he had quickly dissolved the securing contact. The realization that he had been starving for comfort he definitely had not deserved had left him deeply ashamed. Silently cursing himself for being such a wimp, he had walked down the stairs and through the spacious entrance hall; all the time paying great attention to maintaining a reasonable distance between himself and his teammate. The instant the automatic glass doors had closed behind them, they had finally been rid of the pesky cheering and Iwaizumi had unexpectedly tilted his head to the left, "This way!"  
"What? Why? The bus stop is over there!" Tooru had protested but stayed on Iwaizumi's track nevertheless. A minute later, they had stopped at a red traffic light. "Iwa-chan, where're we going? I thought we agreed it's home time!? You haven't forgotten already, have you? I mean even for someone with so little brain capacity, that'd be really poor."  
Instead of providing an answer, the guy with the spiky hair had shot Tooru a deadly glare before crossing the road. Tooru had not even noticed that the color of the traffic lights had changed. His whining had accompanied them until Iwaizumi had abruptly stopped again, right under the striped marquee of an ice cream parlor. Upon realizing this, Tooru's heart had shrunk to the size of a raisin. And as if his day had not already been bad enough, Iwaizumi's next actions had set off all of Tooru's alarm bells. For with a coarse "Pick your poison," Iwaizumi had pointed to the counter while fetching his wallet out of his jeans back pocket.  
"Wha-what—?" Tooru had stuttered, the blood in his veins heating up his cheeks and setting his earlobes alight. No doubt he had looked like a totally flustered idiot, though in truth he had simply been shocked to the bone, because _pick your poison_?  
' _Iwa-chan knows!_ ' Tooru's keen mind had hissed like a venomous snake. But before his panic had even gotten the chance to unfold, Iwaizumi had snapped at him, clearly more embarrassed by Tooru's unexpected blushing than Tooru himself had been.  
"Oi! Stop making that face! I just can't handle another shitty comment of yours today! That's all!"

In retrospect, the setter really could not tell why he had not flatly rejected the invitation. Assumingly still in shock, he had ordered a bright yellow type of ice cream called Pikachu that had contained big pieces of chocolate. On the silent way home, his tinted lips had mumbled a rueful "Arigato, Iwa-chan," while his mind had wandered several years back, to a time when Tooru had still been able to enjoy ice cream with his best friend without falling into an abyss of anxiety afterwards. It really was no surprise that ice cream and cacao, along with milk bread and cereal, were his all time favorite binge foods, for they all reminded him of those long lost, light-hearted times filled with conspiratorial whispers and fleet-footed giggling. Cacao tasted like all the stormy autumn and winter days, on which the friends had retreated into blanket caves protecting them from quarreling wind gusts and corpulent rain drops. Ice cream and cereal tasted like all the weekends they had spent together; like all the countless breakfasts after too short nights full of made-up horror stories and stargazing. And milk bread, well, milk bread was just the sweetest supporting pillar when the world around Tooru threatened to collapse. Ever since kindergarten milk bread had had that soothing effect on him. To be able to buy and consume bags of it was almost too good to be true, it was like heaven was for sale—and Tooru hardly ever resisted the temptation. A binge did not satisfy him unless it included either milk bread, ice cream, cereal, or cacao.

Yet, he had not intended to vomit the Pikachu ice cream. Upon arriving back home, however, he had felt so guilty for being such a pain in the ass that his feet had carried him directly to the bathroom. To be fair, it had been the first time he had ever wasted a friend's pocket money so shabbily. Heretofore, he had only thrown up foods he had bought with his parents' or his own money—and that had never bothered him until the conversations with _a friend_ plus the recent increase of physical and mental discomfort had made him realize that he was indeed suffering from an eating disorder, and not only was he causing harm to himself. No, his handling of other people's money was utterly disrespectful as well. But regardless of how much Tooru's soul cried for help and relief, he was still at a loss at who to turn to. Some online counselor? His parents? His sister? The guidance counselor? Iwa-chan?  
No.  
Raised traditionally, Tooru always considered his words' possible effects before speaking. His family, the volleyball club, even his school would be brought into disrepute, just because he was too stupid to eat normally. And exclusively opening up to Iwa-chan was not an option either. After all, his longest and dearest friend could not magically cure him, so the truth would only unnecessarily burden him.

Reconsidering all this, Tooru now unwrapped the lollipop and repressed the urgent impulse to confess with cherry coke flavor. In a flash, the taste turned his world of emotions upside down. Surfing on a freshly released wave of adrenaline, he slung an arm over Iwaizumi's shoulders like a drunkard, finally giving the overdue answer to his friend's "I know I'm being repetitive here, but volleyball is still a team sport. We're all in the same loser boat."  
"Totally repetitive! As if I could ever forget the nosebleed Iwa-chan gave me back in middle school!"

The smack of a flat hand against Tooru's forehead did not come as a complete surprise, but caused him to yelp nonetheless.  
"Don't say it like that! It sounds all wrong, hentai!" Iwaizumi barked, eyes aflame and hand hitting Tooru once more.  
"Ow!"  
"Serves you right! Those stupid doramas you're watching all the time are definitely no good for you, Trashykawa! What you need is some quality in your free time! You free this weekend or at your sister's again?"  
"How can you say something like that about my _beloved_ doramas, Iwa-chan!? They teach me very important life lessons! See?" One fast move and Tooru had shoved the lollipop past Iwaizumi's lips. The clicking of candy sliding through separating rows of teeth nourished his grin par excellence. "Problem of your grumpy face solved! Ha! And no, I'm not at my sister's this weekend, so you can come over on Saturday. My parents will be back on Tuesday and a helping hand in preparation is very welcome~"  
"Eh—?" Still visibly irritated about the lollipop-incident, Iwaizumi blinked twice, before anger eclipsed his whole face. "Wait! Are you telling me here you need help cleaning the house?!"  
"Maybe."  
" _ **Maybe?!**_ "  
"Haha, don't worry, Iwa-chan! It's as tidy as usual," Tooru assured, smile genuine for once.  
"It better be or I'll mop the ground with you!" Seijou's vice captain flailed the lollipop like a sword, missing Tooru's nose by a mere hair's breadth. Sticking out his tongue, the setter intuitively stepped back, his smile slowly fading away.  
"I'm heading this way. Fridge's empty and a man needs to eat. Bai-bai~," he waved, right hand forming the victory sign and feet leading him straight away from his surprised friend.  
"But—Hey! You forgot your stupid lolly!“  
"Keep it as an advance payment for Saturday~" Laughter a nuance too shrill to play the melody of an ordinary goodbye, Tooru generously glanced over his shoulder but strictly avoided meeting his friend's eyes. He was on the horns of a dilemma here, for despite dearly missing spending some leisure time with Iwa-chan, he felt compelled to exploit the last unsupervised weekend.

Sighing deeply, he turned around the corner and took advantage of the first unobserved moment by spitting out. Yet, it did not do much against the strong cherry coke flavor beleaguering his taste buds like a hostile army. Taking a parallel street, Tooru made his way back to the bus stop. Shopping groceries at one of the small konbinis nearby was too great of a risk. A salesperson would most certainly recognize him as the guy yet again buying a giant amount of food and candy—and Tooru's enfeebled brain had no good excuse ready. He did not even know how to explain to his parents that he had spent much more money than they had provided him with. Perhaps keeping it a secret and just accepting his shrunken balance would be best in his situation.

 

Approximately an hour later, Tooru closed the front door, habitually called "Taidaima," and took off his leather shoes and his coat. The rest of his evening fated by the newly acquired weight in his bag, he jumped right into action, starting with the already half-melted ice cream. Plopping down on the bathroom carpet, he banished his fears in his stomach and froze them by the spoonful. The method was worth a mint. In no time, Tooru felt numb and free and good and—  
_". . . We're all in the same loser boat."_  
The echo of Iwaizumi's voice brought Tooru's emotions back to life faster than he could handle.  
How could Iwa-chan ever say that? _How?_  
The ailing question sealed Tooru's throat and thereby interdicted him from continuing eating and, even worse so at the moment, from throwing up all the ice cream he had just bolted down.

Fighting against an imminent nervous breakdown, he threw the almost empty package in the washbasin, rushed into his room, and changed into his running clothes. With his face deep in the hood of his jacket, he blindly stormed out off the house and _**ran ran ran**_ until he was dead on his feet. Stumbling, Tooru realized too late that the piercing pain in his lungs was about to overpower him. In search of support, his fingers clung to the crisp air, but found it was in vain. His knees hit the park's adamant lawn with a slam, while vertigo squeezed his torso together, giving him the feeling of breaking his ribs one by one. The explosive retching suddenly bursting out of him tore the peaceful still life of the calm evening apart.  
This was the worst.  
The absolute worst.  
Close to passing out, Tooru lay trembling on the winter-cold ground, his body nothing but the rattling of his exploited lungs and the thundering of his overexerted heart. Overly acidified blood leaked from the torn corner of his mouth, mixing with sour puke and salty tears. Watched by a noble crescent and some unaffected stars, Tooru only wished for a friend to help him get back on his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very big **Thank you!** to Sassy, Ya_ya_rose and pinkman for the nice reviews! Your feedback is much appreciated and I hope you all enjoyed the new chapter? ;o

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Translating always takes me a while, but I'll try to update as soon as possible.


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